During a speech to high school students in Tehran six months ago, Shiite cleric Hasan Mohammadi from the Ministry of Education declared, “Unfortunately, on average every day, 50 Iranian girls and boys convert secretly to Christian denominations in our country.”

After the speech, which was reported by the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency’s correspondent Ramin Mostaghim on May 5, the father of one student in the audience told IPS that Mohammadi had “unknowingly admitted the defeat of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a theocratic regime in promoting its Islam.”

According to one Iranian Christian who spoke with Compass last week, “Neither the government nor the established churches can control what is happening spiritually across Iran right now.”

“We are hearing estimates that 60 percent of the Iranian people have now heard the message of Christ, even out in the villages,” the source said. Although many of the new Christians are young people, reports indicate entire families have come to faith in Christ and started worshipping in the privacy of their own homes.